


For the blood

by LadyTurwaithiel



Series: I asked him for it. For the blood, for the rust, for the sin. [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Explicit Language, F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, Karen takes no shit, Reunions, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 07:54:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8241953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyTurwaithiel/pseuds/LadyTurwaithiel
Summary: The floor was littered with bodies, ten, twenty, thirty, forty...her eyes darted around, and whenever she thought she had seen them all, another one appeared in her line of vision. 
It was too much for her to take in, too much to process. Her mind seemed to detach, seemed to go  numb, to look at the scene as if it was some gruesome painting, far away, separate from her. A glorious landscape of gore and violence.
And in the middle of it stood Frank Castle.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I had Kastle feels and I wanted to write something very angsty, so here we are. This is the first in a series of one-shots.  
> Fair warning, there is reference to attempted rape in this story, as well as a group of very racist people, so there will be some implied racism and homophobia. Also lots of graphic violence.  
> Despite all the unpleasant things mentioned, I hope you enjoy it!  
> The title of the series and the chapter comes from the beautiful poem "Persephone Speaks" by Daniella Michalleni.
> 
> XoXo,  
> Lady Turwaithiel

##  I asked him for it. 

###  For the blood...

It should have never come to this. 

Karen was curled behind a couch, clutching her gun in trembling hands.

All around her, hell was loose. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like that.

She didn’t dare move. She didn’t dare make a sound even as bullets hissed around her, hit the walls, shattered mirrors and turned the furniture she was hiding behind into swish cheese. They had not seen her, not yet; they were too busy killing each other.

_I should have known, I should have…_

She had been so damn proud of herself, damn fool that she was. 

***  
The Bald Eagles had appeared some months ago; a group consisting mainly of white young men. All they seemed to do was sit around in dingy corners, smoking and glaring at anyone who looked their way. Just some guys playing at being dangerous, looking as intimidating as they could, venting their frustration by breaking things and shouting. But the worst thing they had been associated with was mild hooliganism; nothing even close to organized crime. Or so it seemed.

But there were whispers. Since they appeared, crimes had increased, dreadfully so; and with very specific targets. People of colour. LGBT people. Combined with some very telling tattoos spotted on members, it soon became quite clear to anyone looking close enough what kind of group the Bald Eagles were. 

But again, there was no evidence. 

Oh, Karen had looked. She had used all and any sources she had. She had even swallowed her pride and called Matt. 

Of course, he told her to stay out of it.

So when finally, _finally_ , a girl called her, claiming to have vital information, Karen had practically screamed with enthusiasm. 

They met in café near Time’s Square –as far away from any gang-related place as they could. As it turned out, the girl, Sandy, used to date a member of the gang. She was a timid, small creature who spoke in a tiny voice and kept looking around nervously. 

“He had always been a bit rough, but I thought that’s how it’s supposed to be, you know?” she mumbled softly over her coffee “Manly. That’s what I was told growing up, you know, that I should find a strong man to take care of me, to protect me. But who was protecting me from him?” she laughed a breathy, bitter laugh as her hand gestured softly at her split lip and the bruise that decorated her cheek.

Karen nodded gravely and reached out to grab her hand. The contact made Sandy jerk and look up fearfully, but when she met Karen’s soft blue eyes, she clenched her fingers around Karen’s hand and started weeping.

“But I took it, you know? I took it because I though that’s how it’s supposed to be, that it was my fault because I spoke too much and too loud and it made him angry that I didn’t like his new friends. Once, one of them…grabbed my…bottom and I complained and Andrew just slapped me because it was my fault, because my skirt was too short and I was provocative. And I, I just changed clothes. Because I thought it was my damn fault. He was doing it for my own good, he loved me, he said he would marry me, he needed me to be respectable. That’s what he told me, and I believed him. But-” she stopped and looked back at Karen, her expression torn and haunted “When he came home that night, covered in blood…”

She broke down then, sobbing into her free hand, and Karen stood up and crossed over to her side, hugging her. The girl buried her face in the crook of her neck and wept.

“Sandy.” Karen crooned softly, stroking the girl’s hair “Sandy, look at me. It’s okay. You’re far away from him, he can’t hurt you anymore.”

The girl sniffed and nodded, taking a deep breath to calm herself. 

“Yes. Yes.” she whispered to herself and she sounded determined. She pulled away and looked at Karen with eyes that were suddenly filled with steel and fire “And I pray every night to the Lord that he never hurts anyone else either.”

Karen nodded and slowly retreated to her seat and waited.

Taking another deep breath, Sandy started talking again, her voice now stable as she stared at the table, remembering.

“That night, he returned home drunk, his clothes drenched in blood. And I just freaked out. He told me to shut up, he hit me and when I started crying he hugged me and kissed me and he told me that it didn’t matter, that the blood belonged to-“ here she paused, her face overcome with disgust “…he used a…a racial slur that I will not utter. And he said it as if hurting that person was not only okay but a joyous thing. That’s when I noticed he was…he was aroused. I pushed him away, I asked him what the hell he had done; and he grew angry, he started cursing at me, he said that he was helping clean up the city and that I was disgracing my race, he started hitting me. A lot. I was on the floor and he started pulling my clothes.”

Karen was aghast. She looked at the girl again; she was tiny, bruised, and not older than twenty.

“Sandy, did he force himself on you?” she asked softly, trying to mask her horror.

“Didn’t get to. I grabbed a bottle and broke it on his damn head.”

Karen almost chocked on her coffee.

Sandy smiled.

“I don’t know where the strength came from. But I did it, and he was unconscious. I grabbed a bag, shoved as many things as I could in and I left. I went to a friend of mine. She was so good, she took me in. He had made me cut ties with her because she is Mexican.”

“Did he try to find you?”

Sandy nodded.

“He kept calling me. I think he’s afraid. He always thought I was too stupid to understand what he and his buddies where talking about or too weak to ever do anything about it. Had me convinced too.”

“Guess he was wrong.” Karen smiled.

“Apparently.” Sandy smiled back.

Karen cleared her throat and sat up, and Sandy’s face sobered.

“I haven’t gone to the police. Some of his friends are in the police.”

Karen’s jaw dropped.

“There are Bald Eagle members in the force?!” she chocked.

Sandy nodded gravely.

“It’s why I came to you. I have read your articles. You always expose this kind of things.” she looked at Karen with bright eyes “You are very brave.”

Karen smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear.

“Not as much as you.”

That seemed to baffle the girl.

“I am not brave.”

“Yes you are.”

That made Sandy smile, the split lip stretching dangerously.

“Well, maybe I'm starting to be.” she said softly “Or very foolish.”

“That makes two of us.”

Sandy tapped her fingernail on the table, then looked up at Karen.

“You already know that the Bald Eagles are a neo-Nazi gang, I suppose.” 

Karen’s eyes widened and she shook her head.

“Everyone thinks so, but there’s no actual evidence for it.”

“Well, they are. I don’t know what counts as evidence, but they are.”

“Are you aware of any criminal activity? I mean besides their ideology.”

Suddenly nervous, Sandy looked around and lowered her voice.

“Ms. Page, they…” she mumbled, looking down.

Her breath was shaking and her hands clenched around her cup.

“Sandy?”

Exhaling, she looked up and met Karen’s gaze with wet and horrified eyes.

“They kill people.”

\----------------

Karen had started going through all the disappearances the very next day. It was mainly very young or very old people. Teenage girls were the most common occurrence. Unless they were from an illustrious family, attended an Ivy League college or were “special” in some other way, no one even batted an eye. Especially if they were poor and a minority.

And the fact that there were officers involved in this made things go even more under the radar.

Karen had seen some horrible things, had lived through them. But still, the disgust and horror never truly left her.

She had felt bile gather in her throat as she looked at the picture of a young Chinese girl, smiling from her picture. She was seventeen, and she had disappeared three weeks ago.

Karen tucked her hair behind her ear and bit her lip.

Sandy had told her that Andrew often met his “friends” in an underground club. He had never taken her with him, though she knew other members did bring their partners.

She believed that was their base.

Karen was not so sure, but still she was cautious; it needed to be investigated. But by whom? If she told Ellison, he would insist they called the police. But they were involved. No, the police was out of the question.

So, the real question was whether she should call Matt.

She sighed and hid her face in her palms.

She definitely didn’t want to talk to Matt, especially after he told her not to look into this case. With what nerve Matt presumed he was in a position to control her actions and give her lectures about playing with fire, Karen couldn’t even fathom.

She was beyond infuriated with him. She thought that when she had found that woman in his bed, she had reached her limit; that Matt Murdock had given her the biggest slap in the face he could. But oh no, she had no idea what the next one was.

What drove her off her damn mind was that unlike Foggy (with whom she was only mildly irritated) she would have had Matt’s back if he had told her. Karen admired Daredevil, supported his work. Perhaps the part where Matt was pretending to be a helpless blind person while actually being a master martial artist would have pissed her off a little bit. 

But now?

Now she thought Matt Murdock needed to solve his martyr syndrome. He didn’t tell her because in reality, he liked feeling secluded and miserable, like no one had his back.

And honestly, at the moment she thought he deserved it.

She sighed and pushed her phone away.

She had work to do.

_______________________

In the end, tracking the Bald Eagles down had been easier than she thought. They were easy to spot with their trademark shaved heads and black attire; and as soon Karen would find out, they were equally easy to manipulate.

So one night she found herself in bar, seeping some cheap whiskey and watching a group of three Bald Eagles across the room. They were young, they were loud and absolutely unashamed. They laughed and broke bottles of beer and one of them even spat at an interracial couple. Karen tensed up as the man of the couple stood up to defend his girlfriend; but the girl grabbed him by the arm and after a few whispered words, the two of them left.

The men laughed at that; Karen felt her grip tighten around her glass.

That’s when one of them noticed her staring.

Karen tensed as the man leaned over to his companions and said something to them. The other men looked at her; their eyes scanning her over. And then the man who first spotted her stood up.

_Shit, shit, shit…_ Karen thought as he started heading towards her. She was still panicking over her escape plan when he reached her booth. He stood there, with his his thumbs in his belt loops, looking at her from head to toe. Karen was about to ask him what he wanted, when a stupid smile appeared on the man’s face.

“Hey there, doll. Whatcha drinking?”

Karen froze for a second, wondering if this was really happening.

Then she smiled her most enticing smile.

“Whiskey.”

Turns out, the blonde hair and blue eyes combination was really good bait for neo-Nazi shitbags. 

Luring the guy into talking was easy. Pretending to agree with the shit he told her was not; not with Ben’s face floating behind her eyes.

But nothing, nothing was harder than the moment the bastard uttered _that_ name. 

“I mean, look at Castle!” the guy said, leaning over his glass with a smile “We owed that man for killing so many Muslim shits, he served his country and then came back and kept doin it, ya know? He was clearing this city of all the junk, if you ask me, kept serving his country, with a gun on his hand, like a true man should. And what they do? They killed him. But people, we saw, you know? We saw and many are taking up where he left. We just see what he didn’t; we are taking the filth down from the source. It’s in their genes to be violent, you know. ”

Karen saw red. She wanted to scream, to break the beer bottle he was holding and jab it in his neck, to scratch his face and rip his tongue out.

She bit her lip, feeling bile rise in her throat, and finally her lips stretched. If the man, Jake, was any smarter, he would have seen that she wasn't smiling at all; she was basically baring her teeth.

But he wasn’t, and he didn’t. Instead he asked for her number.

Karen thought of telling him to fuck of. But this idiot was too valuable a source to just throw away. So she gave it.

As she returned to her apartment, she tried to keep her mind empty, not to dwell on all she had heard yet.

But as she locked her door and kicked her shoes off, her eyes trailed over her apartment; over the wall where the hastily added plaster did nothing to hide the bullet holes. 

That man had dared, he had _dared_ to imply that Frank would approve of what the Bald Eagles were doing. That his reasons to go to war were…

Karen muffled a scream with the back of her hand, biting at the skin with furry.

_I hope Frank finds you; you'll see what he thinks about that._

Karen gasped at as the though came unbidden. She didn’t mean that. Karen didn’t agree with what Frank was doing. These men should be arrested and brought in a courtroom, not a morgue. 

She was just so damn angry.

If thinking of Matt Murdock made her bitter, thinking of Frank Castle made her sick. And yet, more often than not, she found herself doing just that. She wondered where he was, what he was doing. He would pop up in her imagination, bruised and gruff; sitting alone in a diner, drinking coffee. Karen saw him walking around his home, his fingers trailing on the table, the photographs of his family, over the dusty piano; and then burning it all down. Of course it had been him that reduced the house to ashes; this was not a question in her mind.

And when one of his crime scenes popped up, she always found herself drawn to it like a moth to a flame. It got to an extend where her co-workers in the Bulletin started believing that she had a macabre fascination with extremely violent crimes. If they were kinda weary of her before, now pretty much everyone avoided her; except of course for Ellison. Not that she minded. She was honestly glad to be left alone to do her job. She was not as glad that she got handed all the bloody scenes, but she did her job, and she did it well. 

If she didn’t love her job as much as she did, she would have thrown her drink on Jake’s face. But she hadn’t, nor was she planning to. What she was planning to do was infiltrate them.

It took three painful dates for her to get invited to the Bald Eagles hangout–or to be precise, for “Janet” to get invited. Janet was born and raised in Alabama and came to New York a year ago to find a job; she was a secretary. Her family was very strict and Janet was saving herself till marriage. Karen was really proud of that last one, since it saved her a lot of trouble and convinced the shitbag that she was a lady who “respected herself”. 

So, about five weeks after she met Jake, Karen wiggled herself in a dress, pushed her .380 in her handbag, took a deep breath and headed out of the house, ready to collect enough evidence to put an end to those bastards.

The club was a dingy, windowless space in the basement of an old apartment complex. It smelled of tobacco and alcohol, it was dusty and bigger than she expected. As Karen walked down the stairs, she felt eyes following her ever step. There was an old wooden bar, dusty red couches, and a door that seemed to lead towards the bathrooms.

A guy who didn’t look older than twenty three sized her up and down as she entered the room of men lounging on dusty sofas, mumbling and growling to one another.

“And who are you, cherry pie?” he asked, approaching her like her was about to pounce.

“Piss off, that’s ma girl!” Jake’s voice echoed as he pushed past the guy and took Karen’s hand with a smile. She barely managed to stop herself from flinching.

“Glad you came sweetheart. Everyone’s dying to meet you.”

Karen smiled back, tearing her eyes away from the other guy, who was still looking at her like she was a piece of meat.

“I’m glad I made it too.” she said, looking around “It’s rare to find like-minded people in this city.”

Jake nodded severely and walked her across the room, towards a bald guy who appeared to be in his mid-fifties and who hadn’t taken his eyes off of her since she entered the room.

“Sir, this is Janet.” Jake told the man as they reached him.

The man gave her a scrutinizing look and smiled.

“And what is a pretty thing like you doing with someone Jake?”

Karen swallowed and looked down.

_Using him to bring you down, asshole._

The man was clearly expecting an answer, so Karen smiled.

“He is an honorable man who does his best to clean his city. What is there I shouldn’t respect in that?”

The idiot next to her seemed to grow double his size with pride, while the man in front of her laughed, though no mirth reached his eyes.

“A smart answer. We don’t see many ladies around here who understand how disgusting we have let our world become.” he sighed and nodded “You are welcome here, Janet. You can call me Michael.”

It didn’t take her long to figure that Michael was the head of this whole thing. Or that he was still weary of her. Though they talked, no word concerning their activities was heard while she was there.

That night, she left the club with far less information than she wanted. What she was able to piece together though made her realize that with the exception of Michael, these men were driven solely by anger and hate and had no clue about how organized crime worked.

The second time, she met three of the cops that were part of the gang.

The third time she picked up that the bodies of victims were sold to a third party.

The fourth time would be the last one.

\--------------

Karen had felt something was wrong; the atmosphere in the club was different, like a storm was about to come. The room was more packed than she had ever seen it.

She shivered. She wouldn’t have come, but Michael had called all members to attend, and Jake had insisted on her presence. He had sounded afraid.

She ended up sitting on the sofa next to the guy who had hit on her the first time she came to the club; Sandy’s old boyfriend, as it turned out. 

He was actually raging about Sandy abandoning him.

“I was the best thing that ever happened to that bitch; no one else would date such a stupid and ugly shit, but I took her in, I protected her, I tried to make her a proper human being, and how did the whore repay me? She attacked me and run off to that curry-stinking slut.”

Karen was clenching her jaw so hard her teeth hurt.

“But I’d take her back, because I really pity her. She’s so stupid and ugly. No one else will have her. If she just shut her mouth and listened to what I told her.”

“Hmmm…” was all Karen managed to say, as at the other end of the club, Michael stood up and looked at over the room.

Karen kept her eyes on him, ignoring whatever Andrew was saying to her; obviously not paying attention to his boss.

Two guys entered the room and Michael put a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Friends!” he raised his voice and Andrew finally shut up “I have a big announcement to make. Just a few hours ago, Don and Larry over here…” he said, patting their shoulders “came over to me, to tell me they had managed to clean this city of no less than five Mexican trash.”

The room hummed with approval, and the two men smiled.

And that’s when Michael started beating the living shit out of them.

Karen was on her feet, but Jake appeared and put a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t manage to stop herself from slapping his hand away.

“Stay out of it, Jan.” he told her severely, his eyes following the two men as they crawled on the floor, trying and failing to escape their boss’s wrath; he kept beating them, until they were both shivering and begging for mercy. Michael looked down at them with disgust.

“I don’t get it?” Andrew asked Jake, looking confused “Shouldn’t we be celebrating?”

“I dunno, go ask Michael.” Jake snapped at him.

“Don’t mind if I do.” he snapped back and raised his voice “Sir, why are we punishing them for a job well done?”

Karen couldn’t believe how stupid the kid was. She looked over to see Michael turn his head slowly towards Andrew; his eyes two pieces of chipped ice.

“Because, _Andrew_ , those fucking bastards they killed were part of the Cartel. And these. Fuckheads. Here.” He growled, emphasizing each word with a kick at the two men on the floor “Killed half of them. Stole their drugs. And allowed some to escape.”

Karen felt her blood run cold.

“Sir!” one of the bloodied men yelled “We can take them, they are inferior in everything!”

“You. Shut. Up!” Michael snapped, kicking the man over and over until he was unconscious. 

Panting, he turned back towards Andrew and _smiled_.

“That is why.”

The room went silent for a while; then a man raised his voice.

“Let them come! We are smarter, we are stronger! And we have police-“

Michael seemed to explode.

“We have about twenty policemen who are fighting for our cause, how much do you think they can do, you moron?!” he screamed, spitting as he shouted “You think a gang war will help us clean this city up? Huh?! Do you realize how much clean blood will be spilled and wasted?! You are all-“

He stopped abruptly, as a clamor echoed through the club. They all looked around, but Karen’s eyes were glued on the exit. The only exit.

_He called an entire gang in a room with only one exit…_ was the thought that crossed her mind, when the first pair of feet appeared on the steps, when the first bullet hissed, when the first man fell.

And that was how, seconds later, Karen Page found herself crouching behind a dusty red velvet sofa; clutching her handgun as if she was a scared child holding on to her favorite teddy-bear. 

She had been quick to jump behind the couch, curl in the narrow space between it and the wall that used to be covered with mirrors.

On the edge of her vision, she could see Jake’s glassy green eyes staring at her. He was one of the first to die.

Pieces of broken mirror had scratched in her skin and buried themselves in her palms, but she barely felt them. 

She closed her eyes, she clutched her gun, she prayed.

The Eagles knew she was there; but they had no reason to harm her. The Mexicans though, here to take revenge, would have other ideas.

The world was too loud, filled with screams and bangs and curses and shattering glass.

Her breath was heavy, her heartbeat frantic.

In her state of panic, she was horrified they would hear it. 

_No, no hush, they’ll hear, they’ll hear, they…_

But among the chaos, only one sound stood out; a single man screaming.

Screaming in horror “Oh shit, it's him, it's-“

And then the voice was silent, though the chaos kept going.

But something _shifted_. Karen felt it in her bones; felt it as the sound of men falling down became faster, the grunting and screaming became more focused, more potent.

_Matt?_

For a second Karen hated herself for that thought. For brief moment, she allowed herself to pray for the Devil.

But then a pained grunt echoed, followed by a voice that had haunted Karen Page’s nightmares for months.

“Bastards.” 

Karen was suddenly still, frozen. The crisp air, the way the leaves had crunched under her feet as she stumbled across the woods, following a trail of blood. It all hit her like truck, and she raised her hand to her mouth, muffling the scream that was escaping her lips.

She realized she was sobbing.

The bullets kept hissing, hitting, shattering around and above her.

She could see him, in the pieces of broken mirror scattered on the floor. He was a black shadow, his reflection shattered in a thousand little pieces, shifting and dividing unnaturally.

But it was him.

And the figure behind him was Michael.

She didn’t know what she was doing, or when she moved. But suddenly Michael was shooting at him, and Frank managed to disarm him and men kept attacking him and someone landed a punch that made Frank grunt and fold over his stomach and suddenly Michael had his gun back and Karen was no longer behind the safety of the couch; she was firing her .380 at Michael, while screaming.

“Frank!”

For a split second, the world seemed to slow down. His focus turned to her, his gun ready to shoot; then his eyes flashed with confusion, then with recognition. Michael was turning towards her too. Her shot had missed. Michael’s eyes flashed with anger and his gun aimed at her.

He had forgotten who he was fighting.

Everything seemed to return in their normal speed as Michael’s dead body hit the floor, and a rain of bullets hissed around Karen; one grazing her arm.

“Get down!” Frank screamed at her and she didn’t need to be told. She was already on the floor, clutching her arm.

She didn’t feel the pain, not yet, the adrenaline wouldn’t let her. But there was blood dripping down, lots of it, dripping on the floor.

Splat, splat, splat…she heard among the gunshots, but no one else could, no one cpould hear it when the world was full of screams and pain and death. She focused on it though; she focused on the sound until it was all she could hear.

Until it was the only sound left to hear.

Everything else was silent.

Karen remained still; listening, waiting. She could hardly breathe as she heard footsteps approaching, then stopping.

A shaky, wet breath.

The crunch of glass beneath boots.

"Get up."

Karen found her breath now, and gulped the air down greedily; it was so thick with the scent of gunpowder and blood she could taste it in the back of her tongue. Slowly she got to her feet; she duly noted that her knees had been scrapped and cut by the shatters of broken glass. Weather that was the reason they were shaking so much, she didn't know.

She emerged from behind the couch, still holding her .380 as if it was her lifeline, but she didn't raise it.

The sight that met her eyes as she got up almost had her falling back down, almost had her hiding.

Many things haunted her sleep.

Memories of home.

Wesley’s blue eyes staring at nothing, his chest riddled with holes she had created.

The two men in the diner. Blood everywhere, heads open; she remembers thinking they looked like smashed figs. 

The single gunshot that killed the Colonel still echoing through the forest. 

But what she saw now, she knew it would haunt her every waking hour.

The floor was littered with bodies, ten, twenty, thirty, forty...her eyes darted around, and whenever she thought she had seen them all a hand would appear beneath a broken chair, or a red pile would turn out to be the remains of a head. 

It was too much for her to take in, too much to process. Her mind seemed to detach, seemed to go numb, to look at the scene as if it was some gruesome painting, distant, separate from her. A glorious landscape of gore and violence.

And in the middle of it, stood Frank Castle.

No. Not Frank Castle. The Punisher.

He stood there amid the sea of ruined flesh, still, dark; the skull on his vest and his face splattered with blood, his skin bruised and wounded and his eyes filled with a raging dark storm.

No, this was not the painting of a massacre, Karen realized. It was a portrait of Death himself. He stood there and all the bloody torn flesh around him only served as his kingdom; existed solely for him to shine among it.

And Death's eyes were locked on her. 

Karen looked at those incredibly black holes, feeling as if their darkness would spread and swallow her whole.

The last time she had locked eyes with Frank Castle, she was looking at his face as he shut her out, out of the shack and out of his life.

The last time she had locked eyes with Frank Castle, he was looking through her as if she was a ghost, a puff of smoke. His gaze had been dead, empty.

This was not the case now.

His eyes were shining like a rabid dog's; burning, tearing her apart, crawling beneath her skin and gnawing at her soul. 

She felt like she was prey immobilized under her predator's hypnotic gaze; while she was frozen in terror, his was the eerie stillness of the hunter right before he pounces.

Karen couldn't tell how long they stood there in that morbid silence, hanging onto their grisly reunion among the smoke and the bullet holes and the corpses as if they were both not ready to let the moment pass, not ready for what came next. Until Frank's voice shattered it in a million sharp pieces.

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

His voice filled the room, it bounced off the walls, it went through her like a dagger and left her cold and paralyzed and her skin both numb and buzzing. It was like an amber, dark and yet burning on the inside; lined with veins of red hot anger, just one wrong move away from bursting into flame.

Everything, all of it, his house and the hospital and the court and her apartment and the coffee and the woods came back to her and suddenly Karen Page was a no longer frozen, no, she was ice made flesh.

She raised her chin and met his gaze with burning eyes.

“My job.” she told him, her voice sharp and cold. 

She almost immediately regretted it.

The fire erupted in an instant. He was suddenly advancing towards her; every step filled with pent up energy, every word filled with rage as he was opened his mouth.

“Have you lost your **goddamn mind?!** ” Frank roared; his eyes white with anger, his face a twisted version of itself. Karen found herself stepping back, until her back hit the wall. He seemed to grow twice his size, he seemed inhuman the way his eyes glowed and tore at her. He looked as if he would ripher head off with his bare hands.

_He is going to kill me_ , Karen thought. Oddly enough, this was the first time it crossed her mind.

But Frank stopped. He stopped a few steps away from her and stood still and Karen wondered why.

Then his face twisted again and she saw the darkness stir; and this time, this time his voice was low and soft and it frightened her more than all his screaming ever could. There was anger there and pain that was deeper than she expected; a black abyss that could swallow her whole and leave no trace of her behind. An abyss that extended to his eyes as he regarded her.

“Put that thing down.” 

It was only then that Karen realized she had raised her gun.

She was mildly surprised at that. Why was she pointing a gun at him? Yet, as much as she told herself to stop, her hands didn’t drop. Instead, they stopped shaking.

“Put the gun down, ma’am.” he warned again, cocking his head to the side.

“Step back Frank.” she heard her own voice echo as if it belonged to somebody else “Or I will use this. I need you to know that I will do it.”

He looked at her, his face a collection of harsh lines carved on stone. Then his mouth twisted into that crooked smirk of his; but it was all wrong, it was hard and mocking.

“Wouldn’t be surprised if ya do. But if I were you I'd aim for the head, the vest’s bullet proof.” he said while raising his eyebrows.

She didn’t answer; but pointed her gun to his neck instead. He barked something that could be mistaken for laughter.

“You are still as brutal as always, ma’am. Didn’t seem to think twice about shooting that bastard over there.” he continued, jerking his head towards the place Michael’s dead body lay under a pile of Eagles and Cartel alike.

Karen felt her lips shaking, but remained silent still.

“Thank you for that, by the way. Fucker almost got me.” Frank said, but if there was real gratitude, it was hidden beneath layers of sarcasm “You’re a horrible shot though. I suppose you first one was standing still or you used a shit ton of bullets.”

Blue eyes staring at nothing. Her finger pulling the trigger over and over and over while she could only think she wanted it all to stop.

She blinked. She was not looking at blue eyes, no, she was looking at black eyes, unforgiving eyes. She couldn’t breathe.

“You think I didn’t know, ma’am?” he asked her, cocking his head to the side, looking at her, looking inside her, with that harsh ghost of a smile on his lips “Wasn’t hard to figure out. It took one look at you, one close look at your desperation to prove that I was no monster and I knew. So…” he said and took a step forward, opening his arms in invitation. 

Karen clenched her gun harder.

“Go ahead, take the shot.” he said softly, way too softly “Won’t make much of a difference anyway. I’m already dead to you.”

For a moment, she almost saw it. Saw the bullet flying to his neck, piercing the soft skin. The brief moment of surprise on his face. Perhaps he would have time to shoot her, no, he surely would. The police would find their bodies next to each other and this grave she had been digging for herself since she met him would finally accommodate her.

But she didn’t take the shot. She would never take the shot, no matter what. She didn’t put the gun down either.

Instead she sneered.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did that hurt your feelings?” she asked, feeling all the pain and betrayal that she had managed to keep burried for all these months suddenly bursting out of her “Did you want me to put my cheerleader outfit on while you blew the Blacksmith’s brains out?”

It was his turn to be silent, but his eyes scanned her face with curiosity.

“Did I disappoint you Frank?” she went on, not knowing how to stop the words from pouring out of her mouth “Because I dared believe you were better? Did I judge you, even though I am as dirty as you? I truly am despicable. You know what?!” she half whispered, half screamed and suddenly she dropped her gun. It hit the sticky ground with a dull thud. 

She looked at him in the eye and a hysteric laughter shook her; she laughed and laughed until she cried and sobbed and between her sobs she yelled at him.

“You are right. I looked at a man across a table, I was holding a gun and he was reaching for a cellphone, and I shot at him, I shot at him seven times. So go ahead, Punisher, do what you do best. You won’t need seven bullets. One shot, one kill, wasn’t it? Go ahead Frank, take the shot, take the _damn_ shot Frank, take-“

His fingers curled around her wrist painfully as he shoved her to the wall; his face inches from hers, his face filled with furry.

“Don’t you ever,” he growled in her face as she sobbed “say that to me again. Ya hear me? Don't you dare say I'd hurt you! ” he yelled in face.

An expression that could pass for a smile if it was not so bitter and hurt crossed her face.

“You already hurt me, Frank.” Karen snapped at him.

And then as suddenly as he grabbed her, he let go. He took a couple of steps back, walking away from her, looking at her as if she had slapped him, his trigger finger twitching over his thigh. His eyes were roaming around the room as if hoping that there was someone left for him to kill.

“I…You never say that again. You don’t compere yourself to me.” he mumbled almost to himself as he looked around and shook his head. Finally he raised his eyes back at her, his gaze boring in her, looking, looking, and not speaking a word. A few seconds passed like this, with him staring at her as if she had something he needed, but he didn’t know what it was; the slowly he shook his head, threw his gun over his shoulder and turned away.

Karen realized that until that moment she had been holding some semblance of calmness, she had been squeezing it desperately between her hands, and as he took the first step away from her, she grasped it so hard it broke. She broke.

“Oh no, don’t you dare walk out on me Frank!” her voice tore the air like an arrow “You don’t dare turn you back on me and leave!”

He turned over his shoulder slightly.

“Stay safe, ma’am.”

That was the last drop.

“Do you even know my damn name Frank?!” she screamed at his retreating back “Did you ever care to learn it?!”

His gun clamored to the ground as he turned around, yelling back at her.

“Karen Page!” he roared, his face distorted with desperation “Born April the 12th, 1985 in Fagan Corners , Vermont; daughter of Paxton and Penelope Page; one brother, Kevin Paxton Page, died in a car crash, age 16, he-”

“Shut up!” 

Karen stood there, frozen, wondering if that sound had really come from her. She looked at him, her chest rising and falling rapidly; his breath loud and wet as he waited.

When she found her voice again, it came low and cold.

“You looked into me?” she asked, feeling oddly numb.

“Yeah...” he said flatly, unapologetically.

She closed her eyes, flinching at the images that danced behind her eyelids as soon as the darkness smothered her.

“And how much do you know?” she asked coldly, her eyes still shut.

He shrugged, but she didn't see it.

“Enough.”

Karen took a deep breath and opened her eyes.

“Why?”

She didn’t have to explain what she meant.

He laughed then, a real laugh, though harsh still.

“Oh that’s rich coming from you, ma’am. So, uh let me get this straight, you get to dig in my business for a living and I-“

“I’m doing my job!” she stated, while rocking her weight back and forth, a sudden pain shooting though her arm. Her hand clutched at the wound, but the blood made her arm slippery, hard to hold on to.

“You job seems to revolve quite a lot around me.” he said, his voice dripping sarcasm as he cocked his head to the side, sizing her up “You can’t let it go, can you? I told you to stay away, but you just...” his voice suddenly gained momentum again, rising dangerously “Can’t let it go!”

Karen laughed.

“You keep contradicting yourself Frank.”

He frowned as she smiled.  
“What the hell are you talking about?” he rasped.

“You _hurt_ me Frank.” she said, smiling at him like a broken thing “You hurt me, and according to you, that means should hold on to you with both hands and not let go.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop.

Frank looked at her like she was a ghost, then at the floor as if the right answer, the solution was there and if he searched enough it would appear, until he finally shoved his hand in front of his eyes, rubbing them violently.

“Shit, ma’am, shit…” he mumbled under his breath and raised his head abruptly “I was not…I didn’t-“

“You didn’t what Frank? You didn’t mean it that way? You didn’t mean to hurt me? What?”

“I didn’t mean to let you close enough.” he burst out “Okay? Just stay away from me, it’s safer for you. Just let it go.”

Karen regarded him silently. The anger was not gone, no it still seemed to burn at the center of him, but it had transformed now into something familiar to her, into pain, into a lost quality she recognized.

She blinked slowly and gasped as pain took over her senses.

She ignored it.

“Will _you_?” she asked him calmly.

He didn’t answer for a few seconds.

“I should…” he mumbled, looking around, his gaze going over the corpses as if he just now noticed them.

The room seemed to turn blurry in her vision, the smell of blood suddenly too overwhelming and the dim light so bright it hurt her head.

“Why are you so angry at me?” she asked, not knowing where the question came from, and shocked to find how broken her voice was.

Suddenly his gaze snapped back to her, confused and angry and full of pain “Did you even…” he started, then stopped as if he had forgot what he was about to say, or he simply couldn’t find the words “Did you, for a second…did it even cross your mind what it would be like…if…if you died here?”

Karen was about to answer when he took a step forward, his face twisting.

“By gang crossfire?”

Karen suddenly felt a lump rising in her throat, making it hard to breathe, her knees where wobbly and she could hardly focus on him as he got close to her, his voice pulsating with desperation and anger and pain.

“If you died behind that couch and I found you there riddled with holes and I didn’t know who put them there? If one of them came from my gun? Huh? Did you think of that, ma’am?”

Karen felt tears tickling down her cheeks as she looked at him.

“Would it matter?” she asked, knowing the answer.

His eyes flashed and his face twisted. He looked down and back up at her, nodding faintly.

“Yeah…” 

Karen could no longer hold it. She bowed her head down and cried, she cried till she could hardly breathe.

“I’m sorry, Frank, I’m sorry…” she kept repeating when she found breath to use.

He seemed to be taken aback, his eyebrows knitting together, his eyes running all over her with concern.

“Hey…” he rasped softly, coming close to her now, looking at her fearfully; and almost as if he was not sure what to do, he placed a hand on her shoulder.

Barely thinking, she fell on him and somehow she found herself crying against the crook of his neck. It was sticky with blood and smelled of gunpowder, but she didn’t care.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, I got you.” he mumbled in her hair, his hand clumsily drawing circles across her back; trying to comfort her. He took a breath and with a voice laced with pain he said as clearly as he could “I’m sorry too ma’am. For everything.”

She shook her head, accepting the apology as best as she could. 

She was done being mad at him. She was done missing him.

He could shut a door in her face, he could yell at her and break her into a million pieces and still she would take his harshness over his absence any day.

He pulled away from her and Karen felt her legs almost give out as the steadiness he had provided was gone. He looked around, looked at his feet with an expression of anger and disgust crossing his face.

“I said I’d keep you safe and I, shit, I almost shot at you when you came from behind that couch.” 

Karen, somehow, laughed at this.

“I should have predicted that.”

“Not your job ma’am.”

“No, my job is to dig into your shit.” she laughed breathily and suddenly whined as pain shot through her arm. For a brief second, the room turned black.

“Ma’am?” she heard his voice among the sudden ringing that echoed in her ears.

“I think…” she started saying, barely able to find her voice “My arm hurts.”

She heard him curse under his breath and then there was a hand tearing her own away from her wound and she screamed in pain.

Frank’s concerned face floated in front of her as he bent and examined the wound, his eyes trailing over it. He raised his gaze to her.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood ma’am. I need you to stay awake for a minute, okay?” he said gruffly and she nodded, her eyes weakly following his movements as he tore at the least blood-stained shirt he could find among the dead.

“I will get you to the hospital okay?” he asked as she whimpered in pain while he tightly tied her arm.

“Frank…” she mumbled.

“It’s okay ma’am, just stay awake for a bit more, okay?”

“Frank, I’m sorry I said all this to you…” she whispered, wondering why the room seemed to move on its own.

The last thing she saw before she passed out was his crooked smile as he looked at her.

“Nah…Feels good to be hurt, ma’am.”

***

When Karen woke up the next morning, she was in a hospital bed, with Foggy sleeping on the chair next to her.

She woke him up to ask for coffee and a newspaper.

Matt appeared a few hours later. The two of them remained silent, with Foggy looking at them awkwardly.

It had been Matt that Frank contacted; turns out he knew who Matt was even before Karen did. She felt oddly betrayed by that.

Matt would have given her another lecture, if Foggy hadn't told him to let her be. However, Karen was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to go anywhere for a few months without the Devil acting as her shadow.

Ellison was no better, but thankfully he had looked at her from under his glasses and growled “Since you already did something so incredibly stupid, you better get well soon and write me a damn amazing article, Page.”

She did.

The article did great. What remained of the Bald Eagles were arrested. Karen was dissapointed she never got to find who they were selling the bodies to, but still she was glad to have this case closed. For her troubles she received a box of chocolates from Sandy, thankful letters from the families of the victims, quite a few threatening calls and her .380. Cleaned and loaded.


End file.
